Aaron Klein – WNDhttp://www.wnd.com
A Free Press For A Free People Since 1997Sun, 18 Feb 2018 04:45:39 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6ISIS again claims it downed Russian airlinerhttp://www.wnd.com/2015/11/isis-again-claims-it-downed-russian-airliner/
http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/isis-again-claims-it-downed-russian-airliner/#respondWed, 04 Nov 2015 14:41:59 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=2602455
Twitter accounts connected to ISIS in the Egyptian Sinai posted a link to an audio message Wednesday in which the terror group claimed responsibility for the crash of the Russian airliner last Saturday.

The message expressed anger at those who doubt ISIS downed the Metrojet plane. It claimed there is information on the airplane’s black box indicating how the aircraft crashed.

In the audio recording, which could not be authenticated by WND, a man identified as a leader of ISIS in the Egyptian Sinai says in Arabic: “We know that there are people who are still doubting that our claim of responsibility last week was false and that it was a lie. We invite you to check the black boxes of the plane and to discover whether we are right or not.”

The message warns so-called infidels to join Islam and to stop fighting Muslims, “otherwise you will be facing people who do not fear death.”

“Meanwhile we tell you, the Romans (Christians) we will be killing your soldiers, taking your money and properties and invading you in your homes and your countries we will be taking your wives as prisoners.”

The Russian passenger jet was en route from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, Russia, when it crashed Saturday, killing all 224 people aboard.

Authorities said the wreckage covered several square miles of desert, indicating the plane disintegrated while at a high altitude.

A news agency in St. Petersburg, Fontanka, reported forensic experts who are identifying the victims said the injuries align with an explosion, “such as metal pieces in bodies,” CNN reported.

No distress calls were reported from the plane, which suddenly dropped off radar about 23 minutes after takeoff, officials said.

U.S. officials have reported a satellite recorded a midair heat flash just before the crash.

The London Daily Mail said doctors reported finding many of the bodies had horrific burns that apparently happened just before death.

The paper said his comments add further weight to evidence the Metrojet plane suffered an explosion or catastrophic fire that caused it to break up mid-air.

The report also noted the cockpit voice recorder revealed strange sounds shortly before the Airbus 321 disappeared from radar.

Investigators said that among the lines of inquiry were the truck that delivered fuel to the airplane before takeoff and the people who delivered food supplies to the jet.

TEL AVIV — Insiders in the group that represents ISIS in the Gaza Strip claimed to WND Sunday that the global jihadist group will soon release information purporting to show how it helped to bring down the Russian passenger plane that crashed in Egypt, killing all 224 people on board.

Salafist jihadists in the Gaza Strip who operate under the ISIS banner in the territory said the global jihad group was indeed involved in the downing of the aircraft Saturday morning.

They claimed it was not a missile that brought the plane down and that supposed evidence will soon be released by ISIS.

One ISIS leader in Gaza told WND that “in the Russian plane operation our brothers used their brains more than their bullets or their explosives. It was part of a brains war.”

The ISIS leader hinted to similarities with the 9/11 attacks as far as what he described as the level of sophistication of the claimed attack on the Russian jet.

The ISIS leader spoke on condition of anonymity, citing specific ISIS instructions for all members of the global jihad group to refrain from putting out information concerning the attack for the time being.

Other ISIS ideologues in Gaza further claimed the video circulating on the Internet purporting to show the final moments of the Russian jet is not authentic.

The Gazan ISIS ideologues fight under the same ISIS banner as their jihadist comrades in the neighboring Peninsula, the group formerly known as Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which claimed it was behind the fatal plane crash.

Egypt and Russia have been quick to deny any possible terrorism link to the incident, which is being described as one of the deadliest Airbus crashes of the past decade.

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According to the Daily Mail, Michael Clarke, director general of the Royal United Services Institute, told British radio he believes the early information indicates the jet could have been destroyed by a bomb on the aircraft.

Clarke told BBC Radio Five Live: “This aircraft was 200km north of its take-off zone, that means it was flying at around 31,000 feet. Terrorists, as far as we know, don’t have equipment to take down an aircraft at that height.

“They have shoulder-launched missiles, known as man-portable missiles. They can get aircraft when they are taking off or landing, when they are going low and slow. But anything above 8,000 or 9,000 feet is out of the range of the weapons that they’ve got.”

He pointed out the debris was strewn round the Sinai, where ISIS and its affiliates are known to be highly active.

“Early reports said it split into two and that suggests a catastrophic failure, not a mechanical failure, but perhaps an explosion on board, so I would be much more inclined to think, if we have to guess at this stage, it is much more likely to have been a bomb on board than a missile fired from the ground.”

He continued: “And there’s no sign of a distress call, so the idea that the aircraft was undergoing an mechanical problem, or an engine problem, or a fire, or something like that, you would expect that there would be some sort of distress call beforehand.”

“So the fact that there was a catastrophic failure at 31,000 feet, with the aircraft falling in two pieces, suggests to me an explosion on board. So was this caused by some form of terrible accident, which is unlikely, or a bomb, which is much more likely, my mind is moving in that direction rather than anything that happened on the ground.”

Fragments of the plane have been scattered throughout seven square miles and nothing has been “ruled out,” Russian authorities said. Both of the flight recorders or “black boxes” have been found.

The airliner broke into pieces in midair, Russia’s state-run media quoted an aviation official as saying, but there were no additional details, CNN reported.

“Disintegration of the fuselage took place in the air, and the fragments are scattered around a large area (about 20 square kilometers),” Viktor Sorochenko, executive director of Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee, told journalists.

Many of the passengers on the Airbus A321-200 aircraft, which crashed en route from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, were reported by Russian state media to be returning from vacation. Russian officials said there were 25 children aboard the plane.

Sunday was declared a day of national mourning by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to JewishPress.com, the incident took place “exactly one year, one hour and one minute” after Glick was shot four times at point-blank range during an assassination attempt by a Palestinian terrorist in Jerusalem.

The American-born Israeli rabbi, who campaigns for more Jewish access to the Temple Mount, was the passenger in a vehicle being driven by another rabbi that was caught in a rock ambush on a road between the West Bank towns of Beit Omar and Karmei Tzur.

Police believe Glick was not singled out in the rock attack and that the assailants did not know who was inside the vehicle.

Glick’s wife told JewishPress.com that several other Jewish motorists were also attacked and that a woman in another vehicle was injured.

“I was saved from rock-throwing,” Glick wrote on his Facebook page. “One of the rocks smashed the side window, and I was lucky that the righteous Rabbi Re’am HaCohen was the driver. By his merit, the only damage was to the body of the car.”

“Blessed is He who has not taken away His loving kindness from me for even a minute,” wrote Glick.

Glick, chairman of the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation, appeared in the WND Films documentary “End Times Eyewitness,” directed by Joel Richardson.

Last year, Glick was shot in front of the Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem after giving a speech about the Temple Mount.

Israeli security forces killed the shooter of Glick, identified as 32-year-old Islamic Jihad member Moataz Hejazi, a worker at the Begin center’s restaurant.

Hejazi completed his shift work before attempting to assassinate Glick from a motorbike and then fled the scene.

Knesset Member Moshe Feiglin witnessed the shooting.

“The attempted murderer turned to him and confirmed in Hebrew, in a heavy Arabic accent, that it was Yehuda,” Feiglin told reporters.

Feiglin said that at the time of the shooting, Glick was loading equipment into his car after the Temple Mount conference.

Glick later reportedly told a rabbi that before shooting him, Hejazi first apologized, saying: “I’m very sorry, but you’re an enemy of Al-Aqsa, I have to.”

Glick has been recovering quickly after undergoing several surgeries and spending several months inside a hospital.

Temple Mount and ‘wave of terror’

The Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque have been central themes in the current so-called Palestinian wave of terror, specifically the repeated Palestinian claim of a Jewish threat to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Many of the Palestinians who have carried out anti-Israel attacks first posted messages on social media regarding rumors of a pending Jewish takeover of the mosque and the associated compound, the Temple Mount.

The claims of a Jewish “threat” to the mosque were kicked into high gear by media outlets controlled by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party.

Palestinian leaders have repeatedly alleged that Israel was drawing up plans to limit Muslim access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque or even destroy the site.

This even though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has given numerous assurances there are no such plans and that the only times access was temporarily limited – Muslim men below the age of 40 were restricted on some days – was in direct response to Palestinian attacks against Jewish worshipers and police forces on the site.

“We don’t attack anyone and we want [Israelis] to stop attacking us; we want them not to enter Al-Aqsa,” Abbas told reporters last week.

“We support those who are protecting the Al-Aqsa Mosque, those who suffer a great deal to protect Al-Aqsa,” Abbas said. “We tell the Israeli government: Stay away from our holy places, the Islamic and Christian holy places. We want peace, and our hands will remain extended for peace, regardless of what is happening to us.”

Abbas referenced “those who are protecting the Al-Aqsa Mosque.” In actuality, what has been happening for weeks, as WND has reported, is that the radical Islamic Movement has been mobilizing Arab youth to smuggle fire bombs, pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails and stones onto the Temple Mount to attack Jews ascending the site.

The youth themselves have used the Al-Aqsa Mosque as a staging base to attack Jews, drawing Israeli police forces close to the sensitive mosque compound and thus fueling the cycle of rumors of Israeli incursions into the mosque.

The Israeli police have been careful not to enter the mosque itself, even though the Palestinian instigators base their militant operations inside the site.

Look whose access is really limited

The Palestinian claim of Israeli plans to restrict Muslims from the Temple Mount is contrasted with the facts on the ground. Jews and Christians are actually barred from the mount during most hours of the day and are never allowed to pray at the site or carry holy objects.

Those rules, enforced by the Israeli police, are imposed by the real custodians of the Temple Mount, the Waqf, which is controlled jointly by the Palestinians and the Jordanians.

The Temple Mount was opened to the public until September 2000, when the Palestinians started their intifada, or “uprising,” by throwing stones at Jewish worshipers after then-candidate for prime minister Ariel Sharon visited the area.

After the onset of violence, the new Sharon government closed the Temple Mount to non-Muslims, using checkpoints to control all pedestrian traffic for fear of further clashes with the Palestinians.

The Temple Mount was reopened to non-Muslims in August 2003.

It since has been open to non-Muslims only during certain hours, and not on any Christian, Jewish or Muslim holidays or other days considered “sensitive” by the Waqf.

During “open” days, Jews and Christians are allowed to ascend the mount, usually through organized tours and only if they conform first to a strict set of guidelines, which include demands that they not pray or bring any “holy objects” to the site.

Visitors are banned from entering any of the mosques without direct Waqf permission. Rules are enforced by Waqf agents, who watch tours closely and alert nearby Israeli police to any breaking of their guidelines.

Destroy Al-Aqsa?

The Palestinian claim that Israel is trying to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque is farcical, especially when it’s being propagated by the same PA that has itself been caught on several occasions trying to destroy Jewish Temple-era antiquities on the mount.

In 1997, the Waqf conducted a large dig on the Temple Mount during construction of a massive mosque at an area referred to as Solomon’s Stables. The Wafq at the time disposed truckloads of dirt containing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temple periods.

After media reported on the disposals, Israeli authorities froze the construction permit given to the Wafq, and the dirt was transferred to Israeli archaeologists for analysis. The Israeli authorities found scores of Jewish Temple relics in the nearly disposed dirt, including coins with Hebrew writing referencing the Temple, part of a Hasmonean lamp, several other Second Temple lamps, Temple-period pottery with Jewish markings, a marble pillar shaft and other Temple-period artifacts.

The Waqf was widely accused of attempting to hide evidence of the existence of the Jewish Temples.

And in 2007, WND reported from the site when Islamic authorities using heavy machinery to dig on the Temple Mount were caught red-handed again destroying Temple-era antiquities and what some believed could have been a section of an outer wall of the Second Jewish Temple.

“About these so-called two Temples, they never existed, certainly not at the Haram Al- Sharif (Temple Mount),” said Tamimi, who is considered the second most important Palestinian cleric after Muhammad Hussein, the grand mufti of Jerusalem.

“Israel started since 1967 making archaeological digs to show Jewish signs to prove the relationship between Judaism and the city, and they found nothing. There is no Jewish connection to Israel before the Jews invaded in the 1880s,” said Tamimi.

The Palestinian cleric denied the validity of dozens of digs verified by experts worldwide revealing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temples, tunnels that snake under the Temple Mount and more than 100 ritual immersion pools believed to have been used by Jewish priests to cleanse themselves before services. The cleansing process is detailed in the Torah.

Asked about the Western Wall, Tamimi said the structure was a tying post for Muhammad’s horse and that it is part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, even though the wall predates the mosque by more than 1,000 years.

“The Western wall is the western wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It’s where Prophet Muhammad tied his animal which took him from Mecca to Jerusalem to receive the revelations of Allah.”

The Palestinian media also regularly state the Jewish Temples never existed.

Judaism’s holiest site

The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism. Muslims now claim it is their third holiest site, although their stake changed several times throughout history.

The First Temple was built by King Solomon in the 10th century B.C. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. The Second Temple was rebuilt in 515 B.C. after Jerusalem was freed from Babylonian captivity. That temple was destroyed by the Roman Empire in A.D. 70. Each temple stood for about four centuries.

According to the Talmud, the world was created from the foundation stone of the Temple Mount. It’s believed to be the biblical Mount Moriah, where Abraham fulfilled God’s test of his willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac.

The Temple Mount has remained a focal point for Jewish services for thousands of years. Prayers for a return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple have been uttered by Jews since the Second Temple was destroyed, according to Jewish tradition.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque was constructed in about A.D. 709 to serve as a shrine near another shrine, the Dome of the Rock, which was built by an Islamic caliph. Al-Aqsa was meant to mark what Muslims came to believe was the place at which Muhammad, the founder of Islam, ascended to heaven to receive revelations from Allah.

Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Quran. It is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible 656 times.

Islamic tradition states Muhammad took a journey in a single night on a horse from “a sacred mosque” – believed to be in Mecca in southern Saudi Arabia – to “the farthest mosque.” From a rock there, according to the tradition, he ascended to heaven. The farthest mosque became associated with Jerusalem about 120 years ago.

According to research by Israeli author Shmuel Berkovits, Islam historically disregarded Jerusalem as being holy. Berkovits points out in his book “How Dreadful Is This Place!” that Muhammad was said to loathe Jerusalem and what it stood for. He wrote that Muhammad made a point of eliminating pagan sites of worship and sanctifying only one place – the Kaaba in Mecca – to signify there is only one deity.

As late as the 14th century, Islamic scholar Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya, whose writings influenced the Wahhabi movement in Arabia, ruled that sacred Islamic sites are to be found only in the Arabian Peninsula and that “in Jerusalem, there is not a place one calls sacred, and the same holds true for the tombs of Hebron.”

A guide to the Temple Mount by the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem published in 1925 listed it as Jewish and as the site of Solomon’s Temple. The Temple Institute acquired a copy of the official 1925 “Guide Book to Al-Haram Al-Sharif,” which states on Page 4: “Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David ‘built there an altar unto the Lord.'”

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/temple-mount-activist-rabbi-escapes-palestinian-attack/feed/0Democrats' plan to put ATF on steroidshttp://www.wnd.com/2015/10/dem-plan-to-put-atf-on-steroids/
http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/dem-plan-to-put-atf-on-steroids/#respondTue, 27 Oct 2015 16:35:54 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=2575095The highly influential Center for American Progress, which has deep ties to the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton, recently released an extensive report calling for the nation’s lead agency on gun regulation to be merged into the FBI.

The generalities of the center’s 182-page report were widely covered by media upon its release last May. However, the details in the report were largely unmentioned, including by conservative media agencies.

The center’s report explains how merging the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, into the FBI can result in more a proactive approach to gun regulation. That would include stepping up the collection of trace data on gun owners; more policing of sales at gun shows and the Internet; and enhanced gun regulation functions.

The report and other recent center recommendations may provide a window into the thinking of a future Clinton administration, with Clinton taking a strong anti-gun stance as part of her presidential campaign.

CAP was founded by John Podesta, who directed Obama’s transition into the White House in 2009 and served as White House counselor until earlier this year, when he took on the role of chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The ATF’s primary mission is supposed to be to police the illegal market of guns and to target the criminal use of weapons.

However, the CAP report finds the ATF is “struggling” to successfully carry out its core functions. The report cites inadequate oversight and accountability throughout the agency, limited resources, operating restrictions and what it claims is a lack of effective coordination with other law enforcement agencies, especially the FBI.

Collecting data

The center says a merger with the FBI will allow the federal government to more effectively address interstate firearms trafficking, particularly by stepping up the collection of data on legal gun owners. The data collection, the report claims, is intended to be used “to identify patterns and trends in the movement of crime guns around the country and to develop innovative investigations into trafficking networks based on these data.”

The report laments that “to the extent that agents have taken on trafficking cases, they have largely focused on reactive cases, meaning that they often pursue these cases after a major gun crime has been committed.”

Instead, CAP recommends the stepped-up collection of data on gun owners, with particular focus on the eTrace system.

ETrace does not electronically tag any of the guns. It serves as an online database that contains all registered information for each gun, including the personal information for all registered owners as well as whether law enforcement has information the gun was ever used in a crime. In essence, eTrace is a giant firearms monitoring database.

The gun only traces legal owners. Once a gun enters the black market, the system cannot provide future information on a firearm unless the weapon is retrieved in a crime or once again enters into official registration.

Policing gun shows, Internet sales

The CAP report concludes the ATF is lapsing in its ability to police gun shows using current law, which stipulates it is illegal for individuals to sell guns to those who they know or have reason to suspect are prohibited from gun possession.

The ATF is also falling behind, the report says, in regulating the sale of guns by individuals who conduct the sale “as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit” without first obtaining an ATF federal firearms.

The bureau “has only attempted sporadic enforcement efforts at gun shows and on the Internet, and it does not seem to have a concerted strategy to address gun trafficking via these venues,” the report finds.

The ATF is also not currently giving enough priority to “looking for signs of diversion and identifying high-risk dealers,” adds the report.

The CAP paper was authored by the group’s vice president on guns and crime policy, Chelsea Parsons, and by its senior vice president, Arkadi Gerney.

Gerney previously worked as special adviser and first deputy criminal justice coordinator for former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, where Gerney managed Bloomberg’s national anti-gun campaign, Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

Previous Democrat attempts

The center is not the first to recommend that the ATF merge with the FBI. In 1993, Vice President Al Gore conducted a National Performance Review which concluded that the ATF should be absorbed by the FBI to end what the report said was the “fragmentation and jurisdictional overlap” between the agencies. The review said such a merger “will result in a more unified, comprehensive and coordinated attack on criminal enterprises.”

Also in 1993, Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., who has a long history of close ties to the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, introduced a bill calling for the transfer of the ATF’s firearms regulation function to the FBI.

The ATF has previously been a part of other government agencies. It was originally founded as an arm of the Department of the Treasury to collect taxes on spirits and tobacco products. It was transferred to the Justice Department via the Homeland Security Act in 2002.

A DOJ spokesman told the Washington Post in May that the agency “supports ATF in its current form and believes Congress should fully fund the president’s budget request that will enhance ATF’s ability to carry out their important mission.”

‘Fast and Furious,’ fraudulent stats and eTrace

Project Gunrunner, the controversial ATF program that aimed to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico, under the Obama administration has contributed to fraudulent statistics apparently targeting U.S. gun owners.

In February 2008, William Hoover, ATF assistant director for field operations, testified before Congress that more than 90 percent of the firearms that have been recovered in or intercepted in transport to Mexico originated from various sources within the U.S.

Hoover’s statistics officially were released by the ATF and subsequently were cited in a flurry of media reports claiming the vast majority of illicit firearms in Mexico originate in the U.S.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office also used the ATF’s 90 percent statistic in an official report to Congress about American firearms. The Justice Department even incorporated the data in several of its programs.

After a series of independent reports contradicted the ATF claims, however, the bureau then admitted in November 2010 that its 90 percent figure cited to Congress “could be misleading” because it applied only to the small portion of guns verified through its eTrace system, the Internet-based firearm database that Project Gunrunner was built around.

The ATF admitted its statistics were based on the guns it traced, all of which originated in the U.S., thus skewing the data.

Project Gunrunner was launched under President Bush as a bipartisan effort in 2005. It began as a pilot run by ATF in conjunction with the Justice Department and the FBI.

While the operation was run by a few dozen officers under Bush, it received an infusion of cash from the Obama administration, becoming a full-time project staffed by more than 200.

As WND previously reported, tucked away inside Obama’s stimulus was $10 million in funding for the ATF’s Project Gunrunner. This is in addition to $11 million already provided to the program under Obama and another $12 million more requested by the White House for the end of 2011.

Project Gunrunner is purportedly meant to stop the sale and export of U.S. guns to Mexico by denying Mexican drug cartels firearms. However, the project allegedly has resulted in allowing thousands of guns to cross into Mexico, where many of the weapons currently are untraceable and in the hands of Mexican criminals.

The same guns run into Mexico under the Project Gunrunner scheme have been recovered from crime scenes in Arizona and throughout Mexico.

One gun recovered is allegedly the weapon used to murder Customs and Border Protection Agent Brian Terry on Dec. 14, 2010.

The entire project revolves around tracing the U.S. guns that are allowed into Mexico using the eTrace system.

The ATF repeatedly has stated its tracing system was not designed to collect statistics. Still, the agency used information it claimed to have garnered from Project Gunrunner to release what turned out to be highly misleading information about U.S. guns.

TEL AVIV – Mystery continues to swirl around the dramatic events that transpired at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, 400 miles away, the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. special mission and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya.

In largely ignored previous testimony, Gregory Hicks, the former U.S. deputy chief of mission in Libya, recounted an astonishing scene in Tripoli in the minutes and hours after the initial attack in Benghazi.

Fearing the embassy might also come under attack, Hicks said staffers in Tripoli smashed hard drives with an ax and dismantled classified communications equipment. One female office manager was seen carrying ammunition and loading gun magazines as staff prepared to depart for a safe house.

Yet none of that was mentioned by either Hillary Clinton or her legislative questioners during last Thursday’s Benghazi hearing, even though the response by the Tripoli embassy was discussed.

The evacuate-and-destroy incident in Tripoli was also not mentioned in the State Department’s probe of the Benghazi attack. Nor was it previously reported in news accounts of the attack, which the Obama administration first claimed was a result of popular protests against an anti-Muhammad video.

The U.S. facility in Tripoli was upgraded to embassy status in 2006, and the U.S. maintained an embassy there until Clinton temporarily shut it down during the 2011 revolution that toppled Moammar Gadhafi’s regime. In September 2011, after Gadhafi fell, Clinton re-opened the Tripoli embassy.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., asked Clinton about security concerns at the embassy in Tripoli the night of the Benghazi attack.

Sanchez inquired: “Your chief of staff also explained to this committee that you were concerned the night of the attacks, not only for the safety of your team in Benghazi, but also about your teams in Tripoli and elsewhere.

“She said this about you. Quote: ‘She was very concerned. She was also very determined that whatever needed to be done was done and she was worried. She was worried not only about our team on the ground in Benghazi, but worried about our teams that were on the ground in Libya and our teams on the ground in a number of places given what we had seen unfold in Egypt.’

“Can you explain some of the context of the evening and why you were concerned, not just about what was happening in Benghazi, but the risks that Americans were in elsewhere?”

Clinton’s response did not mention the Tripoli evacuation.

“Well, that’s exactly right,” she replied. “I was quite concerned about Tripoli because we didn’t know if there would be coordinated attacks. We were still trying to gather information about who was behind what happened in Benghazi. We – in the course of the conversations with our team on the ground in Tripoli began to explore whether they should move from where they were in the place that was operating as our embassy at that time to a more secure location. There were lots of considerations about what to do to keep our team in Tripoli safe.

“And then, as I’ve testified earlier, we were very concerned about the impact of the video sparking unrest, attacks, violence in a wide swathe of countries. It turned out that that was well-founded concern, as we saw the attacks and protests across the region, all the way to India and Indonesia.

“So there was a lot of effort being put into not only doing the immediate tasks before us in Benghazi, and doing whatever we needed to do to keep our people in Tripoli safe, but beginning to talk through and prepare for what might happen elsewhere.”

In testimony before Congress in May 2013, Hicks, who was the No. 2 at the Tripoli embassy the night of the attacks, described the frantic scene in the embassy.

In his testimony, Hicks said that about three hours after the attack began on the U.S. facility in Benghazi, the embassy staff in Tripoli noticed Twitter feeds asserting that the terror group Ansar al-Sharia was responsible. Hicks said there was also a call on the social media platform for an attack on the embassy in Tripoli.

“We had always thought that we were … under threat, that we now have to take care of ourselves, and we began planning to evacuate our facility,” he said.

“When I say our facility, I mean the State Department residential compound in Tripoli, and to consolidate all of our personnel … at the annex in Tripoli.”

Hicks said he “immediately telephoned Washington that news afterward and began accelerating our effort to withdraw from the Villas compound and move to the annex.”

He recalled how his team “responded with amazing discipline and courage in Tripoli in organizing withdrawal.”

Continued Hicks: “I have vivid memories of that. I think the most telling, though, was of our communications staff dismantling our communications equipment to take with us to the annex and destroying the classified communications capability.

“Our office manager, Amber Pickens, was everywhere that night just throwing herself into some task that had to be done. First she was taking a log of what we were doing,” he said.

“Then she was loading magazines, carrying ammunition to the – carrying our ammunition supply to … our vehicles, and then she was smashing hard drives with an ax.”

The vivid scene, however, was not reported in the State Department’s description of the Tripoli embassy’s response the night of the Benghazi attack.

The section of the State Department probe titled “Embassy Tripoli Response” simply says that upon notification of the attack in Benghazi, the U.S. Embassy set up a command center and notified Washington.

A later section in the State Department probe describes how a seven-person response team from Tripoli arrived in Benghazi to lend support but could not get to the Benghazi facility due to a lack of transportation.

The section also says the Tripoli embassy worked with the Libyan government to have a Libyan Air Force C-130 take the remaining U.S. government personnel from Benghazi to Tripoli.

Hillary Clinton testifies Oct. 22, 2015, before the House Select Committee on Benghazi

JERUSALEM – In her Benghazi testimony Thursday, Hillary Clinton may have exposed a major failing of the CIA when she revealed the agency vetted the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, which served as the armed guard contingent to the ill-fated U.S. special mission.

In a hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Clinton divulged that “the February 17th militia was viewed by the CIA, which had vetted it, as well as by our diplomats, as a reliable source for kinetic support.”

“Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. And the static support proved to be not very useful at all on that night,” she said.

The February 17 Martyrs Brigade is an Islamic militia group that became one of the most well-armed militias in Libya. It took up arms in the 2011 revolution that overthrew Moammar Gadhafi and has been backed by the Libyan Transitional Government.

The brigade is made up of at least 12 battalions, some of whom defected to form Ansar al-Sharia, the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic group that advocates for the implementation of Islamic law in Libya and beyond.

After the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, the U.S. State Department declared Ansar al-Sharia a terrorist organization, and the group was implicated in the attack.

According to the State Department-sanctioned Accountability Review Board, the gunmen the night of the attack “appear to have used filled fuel cans that were stored next to new, uninstalled generators at the February 17 living quarters near the C1 entrance to burn that building.”

That’s how the U.S. special mission compound was set ablaze.

Yet Clinton was not asked yesterday whether there is information indicating the February 17 militia deliberately left the fuel cans there.

Also, the intruders were said to have inside knowledge of the layout of the U.S. Benghazi compound, including the precise location of a secret safe room where Ambassador Chris Stevens was later holed up.

However, Clinton was not asked whether she knows or believes the February 17 militia provided the attackers with critical insider information.

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/hillary-blames-cia-for-trusting-terror-linked-benghazi-guards/feed/0Clinton’s testimony on Benghazi security contradicted by Pentagonhttp://www.wnd.com/2015/10/clintons-testimony-on-benghazi-security-contradicted-by-pentagon/
http://www.wnd.com/2015/10/clintons-testimony-on-benghazi-security-contradicted-by-pentagon/#respondFri, 23 Oct 2015 12:40:32 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=2562685JERUSALEM — A central part of Hillary Clinton’s testimony to the legislative committee investigating the Benghazi attack is directly contradicted by the Pentagon expert who led the U.S. military’s efforts to supplement diplomatic security in Libya.

Repeating an assertion she has previously made, Clinton stated unequivocally at Thursday’s hearing that there were no recommendations from anyone within the government to close the U.S. special mission in Benghazi despite security threats.

Clinton stated “there was never a recommendation from any intelligence official in our government, from any official in the State Department or from any other person with knowledge of our presence in Benghazi to shut down Benghazi, even after the two attacks that the compound suffered.”

“And perhaps, you know, you would wonder why, but I can tell you that it was thought that the mission in Benghazi, in conjunction with the CIA mission, was vital to our national interests,” she added.

Clinton made a similar statement during a 2013 hearing when she responded to a question from Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz, by asserting that no one within the government ever recommended the closure of the U.S. facility in the Libyan city.

In her 2013 testimony, Clinton stated: “Well, senator, I want to make clear that no one in the State Department, the intelligence community, any other agency, ever recommended that we close Benghazi. We were clear-eyed about the threats and the dangers as they were developing in eastern Libya and in Benghazi.”

Clinton’s testimony on both occasions is contradicted by Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, the chief point man in the U.S. military’s efforts to coordinate diplomatic security in Libya.

Wood testified that he personally recommended the Benghazi mission be closed, as documented in the 46-page House Republican report probing the Benghazi attacks.

Page six of the report cites security concerns, including more than 200 attacks in Libya, 50 of which took place in Benghazi, including against the U.S. mission there.

States the Republican report: “These developments caused Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, who led the U.S. military’s efforts to supplement diplomatic security in Libya, to recommend that the State Department consider pulling out of Benghazi altogether.”

The report said Wood “explained that after the withdrawal of these other organizations, ‘it was apparent to me that we were the last [Western] flag flying in Benghazi. We were the last thing on their target list to remove from Benghazi.'”

U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, killed in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012

JERUSALEM – In a revealing statement largely overlooked by the media covering Thursday’s House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton essentially implied that Ambassador Chris Stevens was engaged in securing shoulder-fired missiles in Libya.

The dangerous weapons effort may shed light on why the U.S. special mission in Benghazi was attacked Sept. 11, 2012.

The largest terrorist looting of Man-Portable-Air-Defense-Systems, or MANPADS, took place immediately after the U.S.-NATO military campaign strongly pushed by Clinton that helped to end Moammar Gadhafi’s rule in Libya.

Gadhafi had hoarded Africa’s biggest-known reserve of MANPADS, with a stock said to number between 15,000 and 20,000. Many of the missiles were stolen by militias fighting in Libya, including those backed by the U.S. in their anti-Gadhafi efforts. There were reports of a Western effort to secure the MANPADS, including collecting some from rebels in Libya.

In her opening remarks Thursday, Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, surprisingly referenced Stevens and the threat of missiles reaching extremists.

Stated Clinton: “Nobody knew the dangers of Libya better. A weak government, extremist groups, rampant instability. But Chris chose to go to Benghazi because he understood America had to be represented there at that pivotal time.”

Clinton said Stevens “also knew how urgent it was to ensure that the weapons Gadhafi had left strewn across the country, including shoulder-fired missiles that could knock an airplane out of the sky, did not fall into the wrong hands.”

Clinton did not further comment on any role Stevens himself may have had in securing the MANPADS.

Later in her testimony, however, Clinton appeared to have addressed the sensitive nature of Stevens’ work, admitting, “Americans representing different agencies” later came into Libya and carried out “the same work” as Stevens but not overtly.

Clinton apparently was referring to the CIA annex located near the U.S. special mission. She seemed to imply Stevens was involved in efforts beyond the normal diplomatic activities of an ambassador without specifying the nature of the “same work” that both he and other agencies carried out.

Clinton said the State Department relied heavily on “Chris to guide us and give us the information from the ground.”

“We had no other sources. You know, there was no American outpost,” she said.

She continued: “There was no, you know, American military presence. Eventually, other Americans representing different agencies were able to get into Benghazi and begin to do the same work, but they, of course, couldn’t do that work overtly, which is why we wanted a diplomat who could be publicly meeting with people to try to get the best assessment.”

As WND reported, a Department of Defense document declassified in May as part of a Judicial Watch lawsuit and dated one day after the attack said the group thought by the Pentagon to have been behind the Benghazi attack was in possession of a large cache of “SA-7 and SA-23/4 MANPADS” as well as other missiles “over two meters in length.”

The five-page document stated the “attack was planned ten or more days prior on approximately 01 September 2012.”

“The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for U.S. killing of Aboyahiye (ALALIBY) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center buildings.”

The document said the Defense Department possessed information the Benghazi attack was “planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman (BCOAR).”

The intelligence memo said the leader of the group, named as Abul Baset, established a headquarters and training facility in the mountains of Derna, Libya. The facility possessed weapons caches, with some being disguised by livestock feeds, the document says.

The document stated the BCOAR headquarters in Derna had “SA-7 and SA-23/4 MANPADS as well as unidentified missiles over two meters in length.”

While the document was dated one day after the attack, it made clear the Defense Department was likely monitoring the BCOAR group and its missile caches prior to the attacks.

Revealed: State’s MANPAD collection in Benghazi

Shapiro conceded that the Western-backed rebels did not want to give up the weapons, particularly MANPADS, which were the focus of the weapons collection efforts.

Speaking to WND, Middle Eastern security officials previously stated that after Gadhafi’s downfall, Stevens was heavily involved in a State Department effort to collect weapons from the Libyan rebels.

The weapons were then transferred in part to the rebels fighting in Syria, the officials stated.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in March 2013 disclosed in an interview with Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi to keep weapons caches, particularly MANPADS, from falling into the hands of terrorists.

Fox News host Bret Baier asked Graham why Stevens was in the Benghazi mission amid the many known security threats to the facility.

Graham replied, “Because that’s where the action was regarding the rising Islamic extremists who were trying to get their hands on weapons that are flowing freely in Libya.”

The senator stated, “We were desperately trying to control the anti-aircraft missiles, the MANPADS that were all over Libya, that are now all over the Mideast.”

Of note is that the U.S. facility itself was protected by the February 17 Brigades, which is part of the al-Qaida-allied Ansar Al-Sharia group. The group also was in possession of significant quantities of MANPADs and was reluctant to give them up, Middle Eastern security officials told WND.

Shapiro was addressing a forum at the Stimson Center, a nonproﬁt think tank that describes itself as seeking “pragmatic solutions for some of the most important peace and security challenges around the world.”

Shapiro explained Libya had “accumulated the largest stockpile of MANPADS of any non-MANPADS producing country in the world.”

Shapiro related how then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton committed to providing $40 million to assist Libya’s efforts to secure and recover its weapons stockpiles.

Of that funding, $3 million went to unspecified nongovernmental organizations that specialize in conventional weapons destruction and stockpile security.

Inside Benghazi facility

The NGOs and a U.S. team coordinated all efforts with Libya’s Transitional National Council, or TNC, said Shapiro. The U.S. team was led by Mark Adams, a State Department expert from the MANPADS Task Force.

Tellingly, Shapiro stated Adams was deployed in August 2011, not to Tripoli where the U.S. maintained an embassy, but to Benghazi.

The only U.S. diplomatic presence in Benghazi consisted of the CIA annex and nearby facility that were the targets of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack.

Shapiro expounded on the coordination with the TNC.

“A fact often overlooked in our response to events in Libya, is that – unlike in Iraq and Afghanistan – we did not have tens of thousands of U.S. forces on the ground, nor did we control movement and access,” he said. “This meant we did not have complete freedom of movement around the country. Our efforts on the ground therefore had to be carefully coordinated and fully supported by the TNC.”

He said the rebels were reluctant to relinquish their weapons.

“Many of these weapons were taken by militias and anti-Gadhafi forces during the fighting,” he said. “Furthermore, because many militias believe MANPADS have some utility in ground combat, many militia groups remain reluctant to relinquish them.”

Shapiro said the U.S. efforts consisted of three phases.

Phase 1 entailed an effort to rapidly survey, secure and disable loose MANPADS across the country.

“To accomplish this, we immediately deployed our Quick Reaction Force, which are teams made up of civilian technical specialists,” he said.

Phase 2 efforts were to help aid the Libyan government to integrate militias and veterans of the fighting, including consolidating weapons into secure facilities and assisting in the destruction of items that the Libyans deemed in excess of their security requirements.

Such actions were likely not supported by the jihadist rebels.

The third phase would have seen the U.S. helping to ensure the Libyan met modern standards, including updating storage facilities, improving security and implementing safety management practices.

The U.S. efforts clearly failed.

In March 2013, the United Nations released a report revealing that weapons from Libya to extremists were proliferating at an “alarming rate,” fueling conflicts in Mali, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere.

Some in the news media have likened Bernie Sanders’ outsider presidential campaign to the insurgent, progressive campaigns run by Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, which apparently enabled the civil-rights leader to play Democrat kingmaker.

Jackson himself has refused to say whether he will back Sanders or Hillary Clinton. Sanders endorsed Jackson’s 1980s presidential bids, while Jackson has long maintained a close friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Largely missing from the conversation is how Jackson’s progressive Rainbow Coalition was a key to Sanders state-wide victories in Vermont.

The story is not so much an exercise in trivia about the relationship between Sanders and Jackson as much as it is a window into two personalities’ shared agenda of pushing the Democratic Party further leftward.

Also at issue is how early progressive socialists identified Vermont as a Petri dish for testing Democratic politics and methods of pushing the party toward socialist-style policies.

The National Rainbow Coalition was a progressive, socialist-style organization that grew out of Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign, seeking to target voting blocs that Jackson contended were neglected by Ronald Reagan’s economic programs.

The Rainbow Coalition was considered the key to Sanders’ state-wide successes, including his tenure in Congress, according to researcher David Reynolds, writing his 1999 book, “Democracy Unbound: Progressive Challenges to the Two Party System.”

Reynolds documents Jackson won Vermont, by far the whitest nation in America, in his 1988 presidential bid in large part due to the organizing work of the Rainbow Coalition in the state.

The community organizing work of the Rainbow Coalition was repeatedly put to use for Sanders’ campaigns there, including his unsuccessful independent bid for governor in 1986 when the coalition risked drawing the ire of the Democratic Party by supporting an independent candidate.

In 1988, Vermont’s Rainbow Coalition backed Sanders over the Democratic Party’s incumbent candidate for Congress, with the bid paying off when Sanders won the race and became the longest-serving independent in congressional history.

Jackson said he appreciates the way Sanders “takes positions that expand the conversation,” referencing Sanders’ stance as early as the 1980s calling for recognition of Cuba and of Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

Shared long-term agenda

What did Jackson and his Rainbow Coalition see in Sanders that prompted the group to challenge mainstream Democrats by backing Sanders’ early races?

Rainbow, especially in Vermont, stressed progressive, socialist-style politics, with many in the coalition wanting even to create a third party or to infiltrate the Democratic Party to push it further leftward.

Vermont’s Rainbow Coalition was founded not by Jackson but by non-minority progressive leaders in the state who were enamored by Jackson’s ability to transform the political debate and move the Democratic Party further to the left.

“Jackson’s own unconventional charismatic style, his strong appeal to blacks, and the legitimacy conferred by his role as a candidate for a major party’s nomination all combined to make him an unusually effective spokesperson for a progressive agenda,” wrote Jud Askenaz in the May 1, 1986, edition of Monthly Review.

Askenaz also identified Sanders as the “sine qua non of the Rainbow success story.”

“Sanders’ presence as a politically independent socialist mayor of Burlington, Vermont’s largest city, keeps the Democratic Party from complacently assuming, as it does on the national level, that progressives have no place else to go.”

Askenaz referred to the likelihood that Sanders would make the so-called Fair Tax Initiative and “other progressive priorities central to his campaign” for governor that year.

Vermont was clearly seen as early testing grounds for fusing far-left progressive politics into the Democratic Party.

Stewart Meacham, Vermont Rainbow Coalition co-chairman from 1984 to 1986, said the Vermont Rainbow’s strategy was “to view the Democratic Party as a community-organizing target.”

In fact, the Vermont Rainbow Coalition achieved an immediate success when its co-chairman, Ellen David-Friedman, was elected Democratic National Committeewoman.

The Nation Magazine documented the founding convention of the National Rainbow Coalition, held April 17 to 19, 1984.

In attendance were “white farmers and black farmers from the South; rank-and-file unionists and their ‘natural’ enemies, immigrant Haitians and Filipinos; black church ladies and lesbian activists; debt-ridden farmers from the Middle West who had foolishly voted for Ronald Reagan; urban leftists, tenants, preachers and college students,” reported The Nation in a May 3, 1986, article.

Central to the debate was whether the Rainbow Coalition was “part of the Democratic Party, or is it a third party?” related The Nation.

“Jackson, with apparent conviction, and the activist delegates, with assurance born of experience, objected to the way the questions were framed,” documented the magazine. “What matters, they said, is drawing up a progressive platform.”

That progressive platform, and the tactic of infiltrating socialist-style policies into the Democratic Party, was clearly carried out by Sanders himself during his tenure in Congress.

In 1990, the Vermont Rainbow Coalition merged with other progressive groups to form the Vermont Progressive Coalition. At the same time, parts of the coalition merged with Jackson’s National Rainbow movement, which in 1996 merged with another of Jackson’s groups, Operation Push, to become the Rainbow/PUSH organization.

As WND reported, Sanders maintained a close working relationship with the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, even helping to raise funds and recruit new members to the socialist group.

Sanders was a central player in helping elect DSA-supported candidates to Congress and later helped rebrand and incorporate that legislative axis within the Congressional Progressive Caucus, or CPC.

The DSA is the largest socialist organization in the United States and is the principal U.S. affiliate of Socialist International, the worldwide organization of social democratic, socialist and labor parties.

Rewind to 1998. That year, in the January/February issue of Chicago DSA’s New Ground publication, veteran DSA activist Ron Baiman identified Sanders and Democrat Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts as leaders of the Progressive Caucus in Congress, which, Baiman related, the DSA “helped to organize.”

Until November 2002, the website of the CPC was openly hosted by the DSA, demonstrating the close ties between the two like-minded groups.

Following negative publicity about the CPC website being hosted by the socialist organization, the list of CPC names was moved to Sanders’ own website and was later relocated to its own site.

WND reported as early as 1998 on the DSA and the progressive congressional faction. WND reported at the time the DSA website featured “The Internationale,” the worldwide anthem of communism and socialism.

Another song on the site was “Red Revolution,” sung to the tune of “Red Robin.” The lyrics include:

“When the Red Revolution brings its solution along, along, there’ll be no more lootin’’ when we start shootin’ that Wall Street throng. …”

“Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie. And when the revolution comes, We’ll kill you all with knives and guns, Bourgeoisie, Bourgeoisie.”

Sanders and the DSA

The ties between Sanders and the DSA go back to at least 1988, WND found.

On Oct. 24, 1988, The Nation magazine, identifying Sanders as “the socialist Mayor of Burlington, Vermont,” reported he had been endorsed for Congress by both the Democratic Socialists of America and the progressive founders of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream.

The DSA endorsed Sanders for every one of his subsequent elections and has openly helped to raise funds for him over the years.

In the fall of 2006, Sanders was the featured speaker at several DSA “urban parties” also meant to garner support for his senatorial run while raising awareness about the DSA and recruiting new members to the group.

One New York City event was held Sept. 19, 2006, at the home of DSA activists Gene and Laurel Eisner on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

“The questions and comments actually had to be cut off to let Bernie get to the plane,” reported the DSA.

DSA reported the Sanders events helped to recruit new members to the socialist organization.

“Sanders support work provides a natural vehicle in any locality for DSA to reach out to – and potentially recruit – unaffiliated socialists and independent radicals.”

DSA website and Sanders

The issue of the CPC being hosted on the DSA website arose again in June 2000 in connection with a heated dispute on the House floor among Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif.; Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.; and David R. Obey, D-Wis., over the “merits of the F-22 fighter plane.”

When Cunningham stood to defend himself, he included in his argument the fact the DSA website had a link to the CPC, which DeFazio then led.

In 2000, the relationship between the CPC and DSA was an open secret.

In an Aug. 10, 2000, letter to the editor published in The Kentucky Post, it was reported that then-Democratic Rep. Ken Lucas had received campaign funds from Democratic Reps. Marcy Kaptur, John Lewis, George Miller, Nancy Pelosi and Charles Rangel, “among others on the far left.”

The writer remarked that “those five names stand out because they are all members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus – a group closely aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America.”

The CPC still had not moved to its own website on April 23, 2002. Balint Vazsonyi responded in the Washington Times to the hypothetical question: “‘What?’ I hear you say. ‘Socialists in the Congress of the United States?'”

Dozens, dear reader, dozens. And they make no secret of it. Although of late it has been refurbished and the address altered, they have their own Web site. They call themselves members of the Progressive Caucus, until recently an arm of the Democratic Socialists of America, itself an arm of the Socialist International. The Progressive Caucus may be a separate entity now, but the details of its program, as advertised on the website, are indistinguishable from that of the Socialist International.

To their credit, they make no secret of it. Only the rest of us prefer not to believe it.

In a follow-up article in November 2002, Vazsonyi dug deeper into the continued presence of the CPC on the DSA website. He discussed the issue of constitutionality and the ramifications of the relationship:

The Socialist International carries the torch for Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Josef Stalin. Pay no attention to the desperate attempts by socialists to distance themselves from Stalin. For our purposes, it suffices to observe that every single tenet of the Socialist International is the exact opposite of the principles upon which America was founded, and which define the U.S. Constitution.

For our purposes, it suffices also to observe that members of the U.S. Congress are required to furnish an oath whereby they will preserve, protect, and defend said Constitution.

TEL AVIV – While France is facing Israeli criticism for suggesting the deployment of international observers to the Temple Mount, WND has learned the Kingdom of Jordan is floating its own plan to consolidate power at the holy site, proposing non-uniformed Jordanian soldiers patrol the sensitive complex.

The Jordanian proposal was quietly made in recent days to Israeli and U.S. officials, according to diplomatic sources here. The Israeli government immediately rejected the possibility of Jordanian soldiers, uniformed or not, stationed inside the Jewish state.

The diplomatic sources said that last month a Jordanian general and other Jordanian military officers held a meeting with the Waqf, the Islamic custodians of the Temple Mount, to discuss the possibility of Jordanian deployment on the site.

For about seven hours following last month’s meeting, photos of the Waqf and the Jordanian military envoys were posted on the Waqf’s Facebook page but were subsequently deleted, the sources said.

Jordan currently exercises substantial influence over the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, the Islamic trust that manages the Al-Aqsa Mosque and other Islamic sites on the Temple Mount and in Jerusalem. The Waqf answers more to Jordan than it does to the Palestinian Authority, sources say.

Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected France’s draft for a U.N. Security Council statement calling for international observers to be stationed on the Temple Mount.

“There is no mention of Palestinian incitement and Palestinian terrorism,” Netanyahu said of the French draft proposal. “We’ve already seen what happens in holy sites in the Middle East when extreme Muslims destroy each other’s mosques, Christian sites, heritage sites, Jewish sites,” he said.

“Israel is not the problem on the Temple Mount; it’s the solution,” Netanyahu continued, speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting. “We maintain the status quo. We are the only ones doing so, and we will keep doing it in a responsible and serious manner. There hasn’t been any change in the status quo – except for an attempt by some people, organized by Islamic groups in Israel as well as extremist elements – to place explosives in mosques and attack Jews from within the mosques,” he said.

According to reports, Israel’s Foreign Ministry called in France’s ambassador to Israel to express what the Ministry termed the Jewish state’s “determined opposition” to the French U.N. proposal for international monitors on the mount.

“Israel is opposed to all moves that affect its vital interests that are not coordinated with it and are drawn up without its involvement,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters.

If passed, the draft French proposal would not be binding. It would only constitute a statement of intent on behalf of the U.N. Security Council. It is not clear if France has the 15 votes necessary to pass such a resolution. The U.S. is reportedly against the French proposal.

Temple Mount and ‘wave of terror’

The Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque have been central themes in the current so-called Palestinian wave of terror, specifically the repeated Palestinian claim of a Jewish threat to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Many of the Palestinians who have carried out anti-Israel attacks first posted messages on social media regarding rumors of a pending Jewish takeover of the mosque and the associated compound, the Temple Mount.

The claims of a Jewish “threat” to the mosque were kicked into high gear by media outlets controlled by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party.

Palestinian leaders have repeatedly alleged that Israel was drawing up plans to limit Muslim access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque or even destroy the site.

This even though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has given numerous assurances there are no such plans and that the only times access was temporarily limited – Muslim men below the age of 40 were restricted on some days – was in direct response to Palestinian attacks against Jewish worshipers and police forces on the site.

“We don’t attack anyone and we want [Israelis] to stop attacking us; we want them not to enter Al-Aqsa,” Abbas told reporters last week.

“We support those who are protecting the Al-Aqsa Mosque, those who suffer a great deal to protect Al-Aqsa,” Abbas said. “We tell the Israeli government: Stay away from our holy places, the Islamic and Christian holy places. We want peace, and our hands will remain extended for peace, regardless of what is happening to us.”

Abbas referenced “those who are protecting the Al-Aqsa Mosque.” In actuality, what has been happening for weeks, as WND has reported, is that the radical Islamic Movement has been mobilizing Arab youth to smuggle fire bombs, pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails and stones onto the Temple Mount to attack Jews ascending the site.

The youth themselves have used the Al-Aqsa Mosque as a staging base to attack Jews, drawing Israeli police forces close to the sensitive mosque compound and thus fueling the cycle of rumors of Israeli incursions into the mosque.

The Israeli police have been careful not to enter the mosque itself, even though the Palestinian instigators base their militant operations inside the site.

Look whose access is really limited

The Palestinian claim of Israeli plans to restrict Muslims from the Temple Mount is contrasted with the facts on the ground. Jews and Christians are actually barred from the mount during most hours of the day and are never allowed to pray at the site or carry holy objects.

Those rules, enforced by the Israeli police, are imposed by the real custodians of the Temple Mount, the Waqf, which is controlled jointly by the Palestinians and the Jordanians.

The Temple Mount was opened to the public until September 2000, when the Palestinians started their intifada, or “uprising,” by throwing stones at Jewish worshipers after then-candidate for prime minister Ariel Sharon visited the area.

After the onset of violence, the new Sharon government closed the Temple Mount to non-Muslims, using checkpoints to control all pedestrian traffic for fear of further clashes with the Palestinians.

The Temple Mount was reopened to non-Muslims in August 2003.

It since has been open to non-Muslims only during certain hours, and not on any Christian, Jewish or Muslim holidays or other days considered “sensitive” by the Waqf.

During “open” days, Jews and Christians are allowed to ascend the mount, usually through organized tours and only if they conform first to a strict set of guidelines, which include demands that they not pray or bring any “holy objects” to the site.

Visitors are banned from entering any of the mosques without direct Waqf permission. Rules are enforced by Waqf agents, who watch tours closely and alert nearby Israeli police to any breaking of their guidelines.

Destroy Al-Aqsa?

The Palestinian claim that Israel is trying to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque is farcical, especially because it is propagated by the same PA that has been caught on several occasions trying to destroy Jewish Temple-era antiquities on the mount.

Last week, hundreds of Palestinian youth set fire to the Joseph’s Tomb complex, causing severe damage to the revered burial place, considered Judaism’s third holiest site.

In 1997, the Waqf conducted a large dig on the Temple Mount during construction of a massive mosque at an area referred to as Solomon’s Stables. The Wafq at the time disposed truckloads of dirt containing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temple periods.

After media reported the disposals, Israeli authorities froze the construction permit given to the Wafq, and the dirt was transferred to Israeli archaeologists for analysis. The Israeli authorities found scores of Jewish Temple relics in the nearly disposed dirt, including coins with Hebrew writing referencing the Temple, part of a Hasmonean lamp, several other Second Temple lamps, Temple-period pottery with Jewish markings, a marble pillar shaft and other Temple-period artifacts.

The Waqf was widely accused of attempting to hide evidence of the existence of the Jewish Temples.

And in 2007, WND reported from the site when Islamic authorities using heavy machinery to dig on the Temple Mount were caught red-handed again destroying Temple-era antiquities and what some believed could have been a section of an outer wall of the Second Jewish Temple.

“About these so-called two Temples, they never existed, certainly not at the Haram Al- Sharif (Temple Mount),” said Tamimi, who is considered the second most important Palestinian cleric after Muhammad Hussein, the grand mufti of Jerusalem.

“Israel started since 1967 making archaeological digs to show Jewish signs to prove the relationship between Judaism and the city, and they found nothing. There is no Jewish connection to Israel before the Jews invaded in the 1880s,” said Tamimi.

The Palestinian cleric denied the validity of dozens of digs verified by experts worldwide revealing Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temples, tunnels that snake under the Temple Mount and more than 100 ritual immersion pools believed to have been used by Jewish priests to cleanse themselves before services. The cleansing process is detailed in the Torah.

Asked about the Western Wall, Tamimi said the structure was a tying post for Muhammad’s horse and that it is part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, even though the wall predates the mosque by more than 1,000 years.

“The Western Wall is the western wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It’s where Prophet Muhammad tied his animal, which took him from Mecca to Jerusalem to receive the revelations of Allah.”

The Palestinian media also regularly state the Jewish Temples never existed.

Judaism’s holiest site

The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism. Muslims now claim it is their third holiest site, although their stake changed several times throughout history.

The First Temple was built by King Solomon in the 10th century B.C. It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. The Second Temple was rebuilt in 515 B.C. after Jerusalem was freed from Babylonian captivity. That temple was destroyed by the Roman Empire in A.D. 70. Each temple stood for about four centuries.

According to the Talmud, the world was created from the foundation stone of the Temple Mount. It’s believed to be the biblical Mount Moriah, where Abraham fulfilled God’s test of his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac.

The Temple Mount has remained a focal point for Jewish services for thousands of years. Prayers for a return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the Temple have been uttered by Jews since the Second Temple was destroyed, according to Jewish tradition.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque was constructed in about A.D. 709 to serve as a shrine near another shrine, the Dome of the Rock, which was built by an Islamic caliph. Al-Aqsa was meant to mark what Muslims came to believe was the place at which Muhammad, the founder of Islam, ascended to heaven to receive revelations from Allah.

Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Quran. It is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible 656 times.

Islamic tradition states Muhammad took a journey in a single night on a horse from “a sacred mosque” – believed to be in Mecca in southern Saudi Arabia – to “the farthest mosque.” From a rock there, according to the tradition, he ascended to heaven. The farthest mosque became associated with Jerusalem about 120 years ago.

According to research by Israeli author Shmuel Berkovits, Islam historically disregarded Jerusalem as being holy. Berkovits points out in his book “How Dreadful Is This Place!” that Muhammad was said to loathe Jerusalem and what it stood for. He wrote that Muhammad made a point of eliminating pagan sites of worship and sanctifying only one place – the Kaaba in Mecca – to signify there is only one deity.

As late as the 14th century, Islamic scholar Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya, whose writings influenced the Wahhabi movement in Arabia, ruled that sacred Islamic sites are to be found only in the Arabian Peninsula and that “in Jerusalem, there is not a place one calls sacred, and the same holds true for the tombs of Hebron.”

A guide to the Temple Mount by the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem published in 1925 listed it as Jewish and as the site of Solomon’s Temple. The Temple Institute acquired a copy of the official 1925 “Guide Book to Al-Haram Al-Sharif,” which states on page 4: “Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David ‘built there an altar unto the Lord.’”